"Are you okay?"
Seung-gil looks from the open doorway to the boy hunched over his phone. He's truthfully a bit concerned. Phichit doesn't respond, and that means something big is wrong. Phichit is chatty, kind, sociable, a bright star on a dark night. He is not silent like Seung-gil, is not cold, closed off, he is not a shadow on a bright day. That's partly why Seung-gil is drawn to him. Phichit is creative, invigorating, a splash of white on a dark canvas. Seung-gil is the opposite-dull, antisocial, the grey blankness in the morning.
Phichit doesn't look up when Seung-gil sits down next to him. He simply turns away a bit, quivering. Is Phichit crying? His shoulders are shaking and he won't look at Seung-gil. The Korean's frown deepens even more.
"Phichit?" He asks, and the way he asks it surprises him. It doesn't come off as the neutral tone he wanted it to be. Not the safe nonchalance of not caring. Instead, it sounds a bit as if Seung-gil is yelling at Phichit. He wants to bite back his words, to stop them but they've already left his mouth and Phichit has heard them. He winces because even here, even now, he can't seem to separate his brusqueness from his voice. "Please talk to me," he says quietly.
That, that right there was right. Soft and not as harsh. Almost gentle. It's not quite how Seung-gil wanted it to sound, not even close, really. But it wasn't bad. Not forceful, more patient, not just all bark. He finally managed to do something right, something that wasn't just words spilling from his mouth.
Phichit shakes his head imperceptibly, but Seung-gil is alone enough to notice. He sighs, and just remains sitting on the ground. He uses quiet time to think, and right now he has a lot of things he needs to think about. He doesn't know what to do about Phichit and he is scared to do something wrong.
Phichit is really his only friend, and he's desperately terrified to lose him. He's a bright light in Seung-gil's cloud of darkness, a helping hand and smile through a glowing phone screen. He's a snatch of laughter in a somber room. He's a small glimpse of the sun on a dreary day. Phichit is all of these things, Seung-gil muses. But what does Phichit mean to him?
Quite frankly, Seung-gil has come to terms with his feelings for a while. He knows that to lose Phichit is to surrender himself to loss, and all the emotions he has been fighting off that scream despair. It's not an easy thing, he reckons, not an easy thing at all. Emotional stuff just makes him want to run, but for some reason, for Phichit he is willing to surrender it all.
Silence passes for a good half an hour. Seung-gil finds himself relaxing into the silence, finds himself relaxing into the quietness that envelops them. Phichit has his phone turned off; Seung-gil can no longer see the glow on his face. It's a different change. Seung-gil finds it a nice change, just a little bit. But he'd rather take Phichit's screen-lit face over Phichit not talking to him.
It's the blankest feeling he gets sometimes. It's the cold feeling he knows before a skate, the part where he closes himself off during the week of, and holds his breath until he knows that he doesn't breathe like a normal person. That he doesn't have a racing heartbeat, that he won't get exhausted on the ice. It probably isn't good for him. Staggering his breathing like that-all Seung-gil knows is that he has a very calm, very steady heartbeat. It's a bit disturbing how calm he can be, how collected, how cold.
It's a deep breath Phichit takes next, a shaky sigh which resembles a sob. Seung-gil doesn't move. Does Phichit even want him to? Should he move, should he sit next to him, should he wrap him in a hug? Seung-gil isn't really even sure how to do that. How does he give a hug? Does he open up his arms and does Phichit lean in, or does...what does he do? He thinks back to the skate where Katsuki Yuuri hugged every skater. Surely a hug isn't supposed to feel that uncomfortable, that violating. Well, he should at least try.
YOU ARE READING
Spin the Bottle (Yuri!!! On Ice)
أدب الهواةOnce Otabek catches up and Viktor tells them they are the ones the group is waiting for, Yuri takes a seat on the outside of the circle and stifles a yawn. He takes in everyone there: Phichit, Leo, Seung-gil, Christophe, JJ, Georgi, Mila, the Crispi...